Written by

Detroit Free Press Editorial Page Editor

Illustration by Rick Nease/Detroit Free Press

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported the location of 16th Street Baptist Church. The church is in Birmingham, Ala. This story has been corrected.

Five decades after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s moment on the National Mall, it’s hard to think of a speech since that did more to capture a moment or set the stage for a movement.

Like the Gettysburg Address or Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first inaugural, “I Have a Dream” sketched the framework of an enduring American vision. It propelled change that already seemed as if it were on the way, but that would not come without significant, bloody sacrifice.

I’ve always been struck by the timing of King’s speech on Aug. 28, 1963: It doesn’t come after most of the other civil rights markers of the 1960s, but before.